Hope Springs Eternal

My mother had a saying for everything. Her speech was fashioned by the linguistic effects of verbally colorful Anglo/Irish parents, and from living in Guam after World War II soaking up the Southern and Western cadences of American servicemen. She spoke in a patchwork of literary references and colloquialisms, and until I began school I had no idea that not everyone spoke like that. She was full of song lyrics, too, and would break out singing if the words applied to the situation.  Some favorite expressions came from poetry, but I’m not sure to this day the derivation of many of those funny, perfect remarks.

A useful motherly comment was, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing; drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring”.  This was for when you didn’t know what you were talking about. Another was “Hope springs eternal in the human breast”, which she would say brightly if you asked for something and which meant, “we’ll see”.  It was oddly soothing and perhaps the simple addition of the word “hope” introduced a more positive flavor than the flat “we’ll see”, which every child knows is just a stalling tactic for an eventual “no”.

When the world is windy and frozen as it is in February, hope is a good arrow to keep in your quiver. I always give the same advice for cases of late winter doldrums, as I am nowhere near as clever as my mother.  I tell everyone who is down and dragging to get out and take a walk.  For starters, you need your sunlight and vitamin D to keep you on an even keel, and there’s nothing like some fresh air to improve your attitude.  And nothing reminds you more of hope springing within you than a look at a skunk cabbage as it begins poking through the frozen earth.  The only way to see that is to go for a walk in February or March!

Despite its repellant name, skunk cabbage is a wonderful thing.  One of the very earliest flowers, it has a remarkable determination to bloom.  If skunk cabbage competed in the Miss America contest, its “special talent”  (rather than baton twirling) would be its uncanny maintenance of an internally controlled heat from within, a sort of natural furnace. It runs approximately thirty-six degrees above the ambient temperature. This enables it to “burn” through frozen earth and even ice in an inexorable penetration of the surface of the ground.  As it breaches that surface and becomes visible it has a dramatic mottled purple hood called a spathe curled around an odd little flower that resembles nothing so much as a tiny morningstar (that round-headed medieval weapon with all the pointy things sticking out of it).  This is the spadix, and the little pointy things are the flowers.  You see this same configuration on many species of the lily family including calla lillies, peace lillies, jack-in-the pulpit and many others.  At the right point in early spring if you walk through a wetland carpeted with skunk cabbage, you might smell a sort of funkiness in the air. That smell draws little bees, flies and early bugs of every kind to come and nectar at the cabbage flowers, sustaining the insects and enabling them to get started on nests and procreation.  In a way, skunk cabbage is one of the mothers of spring itself, with its certain internal warmth giving way to the fecundity of an entire season.

My mother wouldn’t have touched a skunk cabbage with a ten-foot pole.  I’m pretty sure she never even saw one.  But, as a mother, she knew all about warmth, perseverance, and hope. It is remarkable at every level how our personalities are reflected in the natural world around us, though we often miss the connection. Mothers, of course, do not have a monopoly on the excellent qualities they share with the skunk cabbage, nor indeed, does every mother have them.  But there is no separating the characteristics of animals and plants from our own.  The world is a continuum.

It turns out actually, that hope DOES spring eternal for many people, and needs to.  Optimistic thoughts stimulate the amygdala, a powerful area of the brain that affects emotion.  It is biologically important to have a positive outlook.  Not everything in life will turn out perfectly, but if you thought things would always go badly, you’d never do anything.  So go out and take a walk.

See you on the trails,
Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist

Stranger in a Strange Land

When in memory you visit that foreign land that is youth, what do you remember?  ”Youth is wasted on the young” they say, and in some respects it’s true.  Kids principally have vigor and innocence on their side. But those who think that childhood and the place between that and adulthood is easy or in some way better than what follows have only forgotten the difficulties of youth.  Every era has its highs and lows.  Experience can kick you in the pants just about any time in this life.  The trick is solving the problem presented.

Never mind thinking that because we’re a “higher order” that  people corner the market on experiential woe and attendant life lessons.  The school of hard knocks admits anyone with a heartbeat.   Animals, birds, invertebrates and arguably plants all suffer the consequences of their errors.  And boy, when you are young it is so easy to walk into the closet thinking it’s the front door!

Due to that unfortunate tendency on the part of young things everywhere, Farmington is experiencing an uptick in visitation.  Heaven knows we’re used to the tourist trade.  What with a house full of rare paintings and antiques, plus a one-of-a kind exhibit of Gee’s Bend quilts here at the museum, and loads of other notable happenings in this historic town in the vibrant Farmington Valley, we get visitors all time.  But not like this one.  A stranger is among us, and he very likely spends a good part of his day trying to figure out how he got here and what to do next.  I refer to a Harlequin Duck who has plopped down in the Farmington River by the Grist Mill just down the hill from Hill-Stead.  He has caused traffic jams to break out in the usually peaceful Riverside Cemetery, from where you can often get a pretty good look at him.  Cars from all over are just pouring in every day, spewing out people with big binoculars, scopes and cameras, just for this little duck who probably weighs little more than a pound. Everyone agrees that his coloration suggests he is a first-year male, so this is his first stab at following a grown up routine.

What’s the fuss?  This fellow isn’t even as big as a mallard, and since he’s a “diving duck”, rather than the hiney -in- the- air kind, you could easily miss him as he swims underwater to feed.  First and foremost, this chap just doesn’t belong here.  He’s a sea-going type, rarely seen inland and not even especially common at the beach where he does belong. Preferring turbulent waters, and cold ones at that, Harlequins nest in the very far north.  There is a larger population in the west than here so even if you see them in the waters off Rhode Island (and people do it seems every winter), it is a bit of a thrill.  But the real draw, aside from rarity?  Well, the bird is drop-dead gorgeous.  If George Clooney were a duck and you compared him to a Harlequin, George would come out looking like Rumplestilskin.  

Have you ever felt you were just in the wrong place but you weren’t sure how you got there or how to leave?  If you are a man, this has surely happened to you while on a car trip. Our little chap may have fallen in with the wrong duck group and migrated just a little bit outside the proper range.  Right now, he is sharing the river with some scaup, ring-necked ducks, wood ducks, black ducks, some mergansers (both hooded and common) and about three thousand rude, honking Canada geese. (See “Goosey, Goosey Gander, Whither Shall I Wander” for more on Canada geese).  Every day, birders flock to our little town to get a look at him.  We don’t know how long he’ll stay.  Surely he’ll get the urge to get himself back with his clan. It isn’t long before he’s due way up in Canada so he can meet a nice girl and settle down.  If he gets there too late, he may not find a mate, or he’ll have to settle for one with “such a pretty face” that no one else wanted to dance with.  As winter melt and spring rains come, our river will rise, and the choppy riffles the Harelquin likes to bounce around in will smooth out. If the biological imperative doesn’t get his attention, maybe the water conditions will.  But he isn’t going sit around looking silly (but beautiful) for long.  After all, the lesson isn’t complete unless you find a way to solve the problem.  Those adept at solving problems will rise to the top, accumulating life’s lessons and ruefully recalling detours to places like Farmington.

See You on the Trails,
Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist

Sanctuary!

When Theodate Pope came east from Cleveland to go to Miss Porter’s School here in Farmington, her letters reflect that she felt her new school and indeed, the town that housed it, was her sanctuary.  She didn’t cotton to the life of tea dances and frivolous time-killing that was her lot back home.  At Farmington, she enjoyed the study of languages, art, and classics.  The curriculum at Miss Porter’s was influenced by the intellectual life at Yale, where Sarah Porter’s brother was president.  Young Theodate revelled in the heady atmosphere of the school and the place.

Such was her feeling of asylum she determined to make her permanent home in the small but sophisticated Connecticut town. We know a lot about the building of the house, the architectural details, the pictures chosen, the stone walls built by masons brought from England.  When complete, it was a place of warmth and cheer, where friends and family installed themselves sometimes for months at a stretch.  Theodate built not just a structure, but a true home in every sense.

Every living thing fashions a dwelling. Certain animals have little use for complicated structures and a scrape of earth will suffice. But if real refuge is required, say from cold winters, more ingenuity is required.  Evidence of such is everywhere in the meadows at Hill-Stead once the snow flies.  One way to beat the cold is to huddle.  More than a dozen kinds of mammals who usually prefer solitude team up and share a bedroom for the winter. Temperatures in such shared quarters can be more than twenty degrees warmer than the ambient temperature outside.  Meadow vole nests may reach 50 degrees in the darkest days of winter.  The little “blow holes” where the voles come up for escape and air cover our meadows. Evidence suggests there are a lot of subnivean group snuggles going on at Hill-Stead.  Meadow vole nests have an echo of human homes about them.  There are distinct sections for bedroom, kitchen and latrine.  I had an apartment in New York once with the bathtub in the kitchen, so in that respect meadow voles are way ahead.

There is a more individualized way of doing things, for animals who just can’t stand the youth hostel atmosphere of a squirrel drey in January.  Instead of staying outside,they go inside! The Pope and Riddle families as country people certainly had their share of mice.  But they had cats. Today, the staff at Hill-Stead gamely stores every snack and lunch bag inside the refrigerator, and keep all the styrofoam fruit used to replicate Pope family mealtimes in metal tins.  Apparently even if it only looks like fruit, mice will eat it.

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in”. Frost writes “when”, not “if”.  Home is incontrovertible. We inevitably return there, if only in thought. It may be that home is not only a structure, but more like a state of mind.  If home is where the heart is, then Theodate was perhaps wiser than she has been credited.  She fashioned her home after her heart, the framework following the feeling.

See you on trails,
Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist

Baby, it’s Cold Outside

Many of my neighbors have big thermometers in their yards that tell temperature, time, barometric pressure, the Dow Jones Industrial average and who knows what else. I don’t have one, but then, I don’t need one. I have rhododendrons. I like to think of them as nature’s thermometer. Rhododendron have a large, leathery leaves which normally spread wide. But when the temperature falls, they curl in on themselves, edges turning under, to lessen their overall exposure to the cold. Frigid air can’t easily cross the curled leaf, and it doesn’t dry out quite as much as it might. Too much water loss can kill a shrub. The branches get in on the act when it gets really freezing-they hang down toward the ground, when normally they stretch out wide.

The rhodie is a very accurate forecaster. If the leaves curl up cigar-sized, it’s cold. When they look like pencils, it’s freezing. Wear a hat. If the part of the plant closest to the sun is uncurling, make sure to dress in layers. The rhododendron fortells what the weather later in the day is going to be. You may be in pencil-leaf territory now, but later when that sun shines on everything it’ll be warm enough to unwrap yourself a little, just like the plant.

There are some darn big rhododendron at Hill-Stead. Their name doesn’t trip gently off the tongue, but if you know its derivation it helps keep the syllables in the right place. “Rhodo” comes from the Greek and means “rose”. “Dendron” means tree. Rose Tree=Rhododendron. If you look at the shrub with that in mind, you realize how much the flower actually resembles that of an old-fashioned rose.

The rhodies at Hill-Stead and in my yard too, are nursery- bought specimens, though the Hill-Stead plants are ages older than mine. Accordingly, Hill-Stead’s are quite large. There are a couple of beauties near the entrance to the Sunken Garden by the Carriage Porch, and several others around the the house. I haven’t noticed any native rhododendron on the trails, though there may be some wild ones further along on the connector to the Metacomet Trail.

To create what we now know as a rhododendron, Colonial Americans sent native plants from here back to England which were bred with Asian plants already being cultivated there. New England native plants came then as now in white and purple, but today the cultivar rhodie blooms in many lovely colors, the result of the pairing of the eastern and western types of plant.

I like looking out the window for a plant to advise me on how to dress for the day. I’m a sucker for homely virtues, I guess. It seems right to me that something earthy should spell out winter comfort. We are part of each other, united certainly in our need for protection from the cold. Comfort comes, after all, from an organic place within us. What comforts us most? A hand, a smile, a flicker in a loved one’s eye? Warm words in a cold world? All of the above no doubt, and each one as real as the curled leaf and bent branch of a plant seeking surcease from a long winter day.

When Heaven and Nature Sing

It is said that animals can speak on Christmas Eve, a power bestowed for just one night marking the miracle of Christ’s birth.    I feel as though animals communicate with me in their own silent way and frankly I think that no less a miracle. There are commonplace marvels you need to look for. I believe wholeheartedly in the miraculous nature of everyday things.

Natural metaphors have been used for centuries to inform the Christmas story, possibly because the enormity of the subject matter begs to be interpreted in universal yet simple terms. The most obvious natural element of course, is the presence of the brightly shining star over Bethlehem.

The manifestation of the star may be legend, or possibly is made up by Matthew in the New Testament.  However, some astronomers have hypothesized that the phenomenon was in fact a celestial event called a conjunction of planets.  Though rare (once every 800 or 900 years) there were three such conjunctions in 7 B.C.E. when Saturn and Jupiter appeared very closely together in the night sky.  The first time would have been in May of that year, theoretically when the three kings started their journey. Another such conjunction happened in late September, which would have coincided with the visit to King Herod.  The conjunction of planets then moved to the south (nearer Bethlehem) and was joined in orbit by Mars in December.  The bare bones of the Nativity story are supported at least by the stars.

The holly and the ivy are not just a Christmas song.  The lovely old carol refers to the holly as wearing “the crown”.  The prickly leaves of the holly represent the crown of thorns worn by Jesus at the crucifixion, the red berries are meant to be drops of blood.  Ivy must cling to something in order to grow, as we must to faith in God.  Dozens of other plants play a role in holiday folk tradition.  Pointsettias, Christmas cactus, mistletoe, Christmas fern and many others figure prominently in popular tradition.

Trees stand out in the panoply of Christmas stories.  Naturally, there is the Christmas tree, an evergreen whose perpetual living color symbolizes eternal life, which is perhaps today one of the most universal signs of the season.

The Yule log, the trunk of an entire tree, was meant to burn from end to end over the twelve days of Christmas. The log was placed with one end in the fireplace and the other sticking out into the room and was fed into the fireplace as needed.  Trees play such a big role in the holiday, and neither are birds left out. Cardinals and robins have long been associated with Christmas and the story of the robin’s role is particularly sweet.  It tells how the bird stayed near Jesus as he slept in the manger, keeping him warm by beating his wings beside a small fire and singeing his breast by proximity to the flame.

Stories with centuries behind them are rooted in something powerful.  They are an attempt to explain that which cannot be explained.  They go where current science (or any science at all) can take us.   It is no surprise that holidays like Hannukah and Christmas occur so closely together and are animated by our necessity for warmth and light.  These are the longest, darkest days of the year.  The best way to withstand them is to gather together in demonstrations of faith and celebrations of light. The winter solstice (the darkest day, literally, with the fewest hours of daylight) occurred this year on December 21, just four days before Christmas and less than a week from the final night of Hanukkah.  It’s all downhill from here, each new day lengthening with ever greater radiance. Sustain yourself and those you love with incandescence of whatever form you find illuminating.

Warm Wishes from us here at Hill-Stead.

See you on the trails in 2010,
Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist

Winter Over

If I were a bird, I’d surely be the migrating kind.  Even with central heating and nice sweaters, I freeze from December to March.  As a mammal, I ought to be able to up my body temperature running around the living room a few times, but winter is as much a state of mind as a condition to be endured.

Captain Lawrence “Otis” Oates, a member of the Scott expedition to Antarctica, knowing that all was lost, told his comrades, “I am just going outside and am likely to be some time.”  Leaving the tent, he disappeared into the swirling snow. He never returned. His good manners and sang froid are an inspiration, his heroism breathtaking.  I am ashamed to confess that had I been a member of the expedition, I’d have wired home for a rescue when the first iceberg appeared on the horizon.

Certain birds like gulls and waterfowl have a nifty way of keeping their legs warm when standing on ice or swimming in frigid water. They have a kind of “heat exchanger” where warm blood from the body of the bird flows down an artery toward the feet.  As it travels, its warmth “leaks” over from the artery into the veins carrying the cold blood up from the feet towards the body.  The exchange is effectuated through blood vessels and muscles that divert the blood into the exchanger.  Nature’s simple, elegant solutions to climate are a miracle.  In a season that celebrates miracles, it’s nice to think about.

There is a charmingly homespun way to express the habit of birds staying on their breeding grounds all year, even during the coldest months.  They are said to “over winter”. There are a number of birds who remain in our area throughout the year and these can be seen fairly easily at Hill-Stead. Cardinals, bluejays, song sparrows, mourning doves, woodpeckers of all kinds, chickadees, tufted titmouse are plentiful.  The “common” finches-house and goldfinch, are around, too. The goldfinches trade in their bright feathers for drab ones, the better for camouflage in the leafless winter landscape. You have to work a little harder for other birds that may be here in winter, like hermit thrush,purple finch, cedar waxwings,rusty blackbirds, owls, and in open water, bald eagles.  But they are here and all can be found on the estate, with the exception of the eagle, which is sometimes down on the Farmington River when the water isn’t frozen.

We get so excited when spring comes!  People exclaim, “I saw a robin today!”, or, “The bluebirds are back!”  Truth be told, these birds over winter, too.  But there is a trick to it.  ”Our” robins migrate just a bit south of here, say, to Washington, D.C.,  where the winter is a shade milder than in Southern New England. The robins found in Maine during the breeding season come down here to Connecticut for their winter vacation.  Weather dictates how far the birds need to go to enjoy more temperate conditions. But the movement is a matter of a few hundred miles, not at all the same as migration of a warbler for example, who will fly thousands of miles south from New England to spend the winter in the warmth of the Caribbean.

Now that’s my kind of bird.

See you on the trails,
Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist

Be It Ever So Humble

Colors and Texture of the Paper Wasp Nest

It is always instructive to go without.  Restrict fats, salt, sugar and you learn how food really tastes.  Eat lobster without drawn butter and find lobster unadorned is sublime!  Before, all was butter.  Now, lobster has something new.  It’s called flavor.

Similarly in late fall, when it first seems that nature is null without its greenery,  we can adjust to the absence of leaves and see what has happened all around, disguised under a mantle of foliage.  There has been, literally, a beehive of activity going on under our noses! I like to pride myself, a little, on my small ability to “bird by ear”.  That is to say I sometimes can identify birds by their songs.  I pick up some regulars that way, and maybe narrow down others to an identifiable point.  Another good test is looking at nests built in trees and shrubs.  I like this method very much, because I don’t have to do it on the fly.  It is a lot easier when the subject isn’t moving.

It’s lovely to have the leisure really to look carefully at something.  I don’t always, I confess, know what I am looking at.  But armed with a good field guide and unlimited time, I can usually arrive at an educated guess. So I like nests.  You can see so many in December’s empty branches, I often feel ashamed that I didn’t realize so many different birds were around.

Oriole Nest

The easiest to spot seem to be oriole’s nests.  Swinging above, they look to me like ladies’ purses of yesteryear, not really big enough to hold much but inexplicably capacious nonetheless.  If you are lucky enough to notice one during breeding season, and you settle down for a nice look-see, you might get a view of an oriole parent returning to the nest to feed babies.  These parents are clever. They set down in a nearby tree, hopping closer by degrees until they all at once pop into the pendulous nest which barely seems big enough to hold one bird, let alone a clutch of straining babies and an adult! Built of spiders’ webs, lichen and seemingly a lot of good luck, the nest bulges under the strain but holds up manfully time after time.

And it isn’t only birds. Hornets are busy all spring and summer, creating huge elliptical nests that look like they are made from grey paper. We call the bugs paper wasps, hornets and other names. Made from tree pulp and a sort of spit, the nest  seems like real paper – after all paper is water and pulp. But what these insects do with it is nothing short of a miracle, perhaps more of a miracle than the things people sometimes do with paper.   

The hornet queen snuggles down for the winter somewhere dry like a wall or under some moss.  When spring arrives, she searches out a good place for a nest. Hollow trees and high branches are favored locations.  She creates a sturdy link t0 hold the nest to the branch or cavity.  Then she builds “cells”-tiny little chambers, in a row and lays eggs in them.  The first comb will have between five and ten cells.  A little less than a week later, the babies hatch and the queen feeds them constantly so they will grow quickly, turning first into little cocoons, then into grown hornets.  These new “workers” are all female, and they snap into action instantly building new combs and attaching them to the original.  Over the course of the summer the nest grows fatter with exponentially developing new cells and hornets until summer’s apex of warmth and light, when production begins to fall off. The elliptical shape forms as each new row of cells made is just a little smaller than the one before.

Egg-Filled Cells

I suppose the reason I like looking at nests is that they are homes.  Who doesn’t enjoy a surreptitious look around someone’s house, picking up snatches of information about their habits and tastes?  It may be,  and I think it is, one of the reasons people find Hill-Stead so fascinating.  A  favorite childhood pastime for me involved walking my dog after dark, looking into the homes of people with their lights on so I could imagine I lived there and what that might be like.  I checked out decor, and if I could see people, watched to see if they looked happy or not.

In adulthood, I seem to have transferred this little diversion toward natural history.  But the feeling is the same, the subjects no less interesting, and one no less intricate than the other, just different.  Nature’s role is less tortured than that of man.  Insects, animals, birds’ nests, are simply what they were meant to be. Only humans thrash around questioning our roles in the universe. It may be that too many analytical skills are a disadvantage.  When you’ve flailed about too much it’s good, if you can, to go home.   Be it woven nest, split-level house, or moss-covered hidey-hole, we all need to get out of the elements from time to time and rest.

See you on the trails,
Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist

Ever Green

It’s nice to see a little green around as winter advances.  The land is still pretty at this time of year, but it needs some definition and an evergreen is just the thing for it.  Some folks are easily able to identify deciduous trees (ones who lose their leaves in fall)  just by the bark, and there are loads of chirpy books about identifying such trees in winter, full of instructions about terminal buds, lateral buds, lenticels and leaf scars. But give me a nice evergreen any day.  Life is hard enough without adding to it the seemingly useless skill of recognizing leafless trees.

Not to say that evergreens don’t lose their leaves, in fact, they are always losing them in small numbers so we don’t much notice it. Many believe that evergreen trees have no leaves, but that’s not so, either.  The things we call needles are leaves, just really skinny ones. These needles are very waxy, too, so they keep their moisture, unlike deciduous trees whose leaves grow brittle.

Especially near Christmas people start thinking about which kind of evergreen is the best.  Many people like to bring home a nice spruce.  But how do you know you’re bringing home a real spruce to your relatives, who are busily hauling out the ornaments and fighting over who put the star on top last year? Those fellows at the firehouse parking lots are firemen, not dendrologists, so it might be a good idea to learn a few common evergreen trees to make sure you don’t get fleeced, not at least until you visit the American Girl Doll website.

There is a simple rule of thumb for identifying spruces.  Spruce needles are distributed along the twig singly, not in bunches.  Think spruce=single.  Also take a look at the cones, if there are any  left on your future holiday focal point.  Spruce cones point to the ground.  Some describe them as “sagging” from the branches.  There is a an alitterative memory device for this, too.  Spruce=sag (as in cones).   People in my family like a fir, and you see many firs for sale at this time of year.  Being evergreens, they have cones, too.  But fir cones point at the sky.  They “fly” up. Fir=fly.  This doesn’t apply to Douglas-firs.  Douglas-firs are a western tree and whoever named them might formerly have been an easterner.  He was probably homesick because firs and Douglas-firs are not at all the same kind of tree, and there is an entirely different way of identifying them. Maybe the chap who chose the name was himself named Douglas, or his dad was, or his son or favorite dog, I don’t really know. I just know the trees are not the same.

Pines are easy.  They are the number one most populous tree in America, but if you value family harmony don’t bring home a pine for use as a Christmas tree.  Their needles come in bunches, and it is like nailing jelly to the wall trying to get ornaments to stay put on a pine.   Watch for the needle bunches that identify pines.  Buy a tree that has single needles and everyone will be happy when you get home.  Another evergreen that theoretically could be used as a Christmas tree might be the hemlock, whose needles also grow singly along the twig.  I’ve never seen them sold for that, but it might not be a bad idea since so many of them are dying from the Wooly Adelgid virus anyway.  For now, my only advice on the hemlock front is not to stand underneath one in a high wind.

The fire fighters might try to get you to buy a cedar, and you should if you like the look of them and no one in your family is a hemophiliac.   Here’s the problem:  cedars don’t have very noticeable needles.  Some people and books say they have “scales”. These scales feel like sharp little pins. They may “stick” you when you try to pick the tree up to hoist it on top of your car.   The kids will be crying from being “stuck” by the “cedar” before there are five ornaments on the tree. Think about sticky, scaly, sanguinated cedars and you won’t even want to look at one, let alone buy it.

Here’s my best piece of advice.  Buy an artificial tree*.  They have really nice ones these days, some that even have the lights on already and a stand at the bottom so you don’t have to hold the tree for hours while someone snarls at you, “More to the right!”  You’ll be helping the environment.  You can use that same tree next year and for many years to come.  You also save loads of “green” by not buying cut trees that have been taken from the disappearing boreal forests of Canada and trucked here producing masses of greenhouse gasses, turning “evergreen” into “never green again”.   After the holiday you can look around at all the nice, living pines, firs and cedars and feel as though you’ve given just about everybody a really nice Christmas present.

*or a locally grown, cut down by you and yours, sustainably grown live one.

See you on the trails,
Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist

Assassins

Oh, assassin bug, assassin bug,

you really are so dreamy

It’s hard to say which one is best

Harpactor or reduviinae,

A “helping” sort, you remind me of a spider,

You eat the bugs folks can’t abide,

Like crunchy, six-legged sliders!

An arachnid’s an “assassin” too, but not like you,

She doesn’t try to hide it,

Sitting in her silken web, or daintily astride it.

One day it came, the final price delivered,

For grim offence to prior-eaten bugs,

Snared in a spider’s web you quivered.

Assassin bug, oh naive victim.

I watched your end, regrets.

She wrapped you up to hide you,

And when time came to slake her thirst,

She neatly liquified you!

The photographs were taken recently on Hill-Stead’s sunny west wall.  The encounter between this bug and the spider didn’t turn out well from the assassin bug’s point of view.  Apparently size really doesn’t matter.

The assassin bug is an insect (six legs) known for creeping stealthily toward a victim-and pouncing!  They move very slowly until the last moment.  Assassin bugs can jump as well as fly, making them a formidable predator.  Assassins are considered to be a “beneficial insect”, eating bugs that destroy crops and otherwise annoy humans.  The assassin bug falls into the category of “true bugs”-hemiptera.  Further, they are known to be part of a large group of bugs with cone-shaped heads, which mask a sharp beak that delivers a painful bite.  They’ll bite humans as well as their usual prey, sometimes causing a severe reaction.  Assassin bugs occur the world over, and can sometimes take down prey that is much bigger than itself.  The females of the species make better hunters as they need the protein to procreate and to sustain offspring.  After immobilizing a victim, they inject a venom that breaks down the organs of the unfortunate prey. Ironically in view of the photos above, this is precisely how a spider operates, the difference being that the spider waits for prey and the assassin bug pursues it directly.

See you on the trails,
Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist

The Sufficiency of Small Things

When do you say, “I’ve seen it all!” or, “I’ve had enough!”? Sometimes when my husband starts talking about travel involving airplanes, I say, “I’ve seen enough!” My tolerance for airports, airlines and other air travelers has diminished as I age.

Oddly, though I’m on the trails at Hill-Stead so often, I have never felt that I’ve seen enough of them. Something always happens to pique my interest or even make me laugh. I suppose it’s just as well our trails are quiet. The sight of me walking along alone and laughing my head off might worry people. The other day I was hiking along, thinking how much fun it was looking at woodpeckers. They are amusing birds, and easy to see in any season save  high summer, which they spend skulking around so that they don’t draw attention to their babies. It must be a real strain on them, since they are utter rabble rousers the rest of the year.

Many woodpeckers look alike, so it can be hard to tell them apart. Their names seem deliberately confusing, as though the nomenclature police don’t really want people to know which one is which. The “Red-Headed Woodpecker” for example, is infrequently seen in Connecticut and it does have a very red head. But the “Red-Bellied Woodpecker”, seen commonly here, also wears a sort of red skullcap. Since people see the red-bellied often, and the red head is so prominent, most people in these parts think it is the Red-Headed Woodpecker. They have no idea that the bird also sports a pretty red mark on its’ belly, which in reality accounts for the name.

A list of woodpeckers that can be seen in Connecticut is found in stores selling birding supplies and books. You can also print one from the Connecticut Ornithological Association website. There aren’t a lot of woodpeckers on it, and one that is listed is extirpated from the state. The Red-Headed Woodpecker is listed, but is rarely seen. That leaves six woodpeckers that anyone here might reasonably expect to see. These are: Downy Woodpecker, Hairy Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker, Red-Bellied Woodpecker and Pileated Woodpecker.

Most of us can identify a Downy.  They aren’t scarce, and they are the spitting image of the Hairy Woodpecker, which is harder to find than the Downy. Both have black and white “ladder” patterns on the back, and males have a distinctive red dot on the back of the head. But the Downy has a beak that is about the same length as the width of its’ head. The Hairy’s beak is far longer than that, and the bird is really much bigger overall than the Downy.

The Flicker is a charming woodie with a little chevron at the top of the chest, and a funny red Simon Legree mustache. They love to forage for ants and are known for feeding on the ground. With a brown/beige color scheme they camouflage well, and they also feed in trees.

The Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker has the habit of drilling horizontal lines of “wells” in order to sip the sap that oozes out. They re-drill the wells to keep them flowing, also eating bugs drawn there by the sweet sap  - a miracle of one-stop shopping. Woodpeckers have long tongues that roll up like fire hoses and are attached at the back of the head so they can stretch a long way into a hole or crevice.  It is shaped like a bottle brush the better to dig the food out. Scientists (and helmet companies) are studying woodpecker skulls to figure out how they handle all that pecking without sustaining brain damage. They are models of good design.

The enormous Pileated Woodpecker was the prototype for Woody Woodpecker. It has the same hammer-shaped head and crazy laugh like the cartoon bird. Pileated’s are cousin to the “Lord God Bird”, or Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. A couple of years back someone in an Arkansas swamp thought they saw an Ivory-Billed. Before that, people thought the bird was extinct, and only old folks ever remembered seeing them. By the 1940’s the bird was already rare, and when the war came and forests were logged, no one saw it any more, until the guy in the swamp. Ivory-Billed’s were known as the “Lord God” bird because people who saw the huge things would utter “Lord God!” in amazement.

The Pileated was and is found in those same swamps. The cousins are very alike. After the “Lord God” bird was supposedly rediscovered, avian search parties rushed to see if they could suss out another, but in the end it seems to have been a Pileated after all. Should you see a Pilated yourself, feel free to yell “Lord God” if you want. They are themselves an impressive bird even if they aren’t rare or the subject of million-dollar search parties and best-selling books.

So it happened that recently I was watching and listening to woodpeckers at Hill-Stead. The ever-present Downy and Red-Bellied woodies popped up and down tree trunks like mechanical birds. Pretty soon a Hairy Woodpecker made his presence known with a demanding call note and a Flicker sang out his wild call. Four different woodpeckers in less than ten minutes is pretty good. Next, I noticed a Sapsucker furtively drilling a well high up in a Hemlock. So I had five out of the six! I never figured on getting the Pileated, and I wasn’t seriously looking. Yet suddenly there it was, crazy laugh and all. What’s more, I was able to follow his flight through the trees and watch him hop into his roost. All six woodpeckers at the same time! It made me get a feel for when to say “I’ve had enough” and “I’ve seen enough”, with respect to woodpeckers anyway. Although I have seen them all, I can assure you, I haven’t seen enough!

See you on the trails,
Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist